The Associated Press

A judge has denied a request by news organizations including The Associated Press to unseal court records involving the mental competency of billionaire Tom Benson when he rewrote his will to give his third wife ownership of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans sports franchises.

A fire early July 11 destroyed the rooftop and most of the interior of a Catholic church in California that was undergoing renovation to mark its upcoming 250th anniversary celebration.

The U.S. Roman Catholic Church used a special and unprecedented exemption from federal rules to amass at least $1.4 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid, with many millions going to dioceses that have paid huge settlements or sought bankruptcy protection because of clergy sexual abuse cover-ups.

A former Roman Catholic deacon awaiting trial on rape charges in New Orleans has died, his defense attorney said June 30.

The Vatican says Pope Francis has been informed about an appeal launched by a group of Catholics in Poland urging intervention into cases where bishops have continued to cover up for priests who sexually molest children.

Pope Francis has ordered a Polish bishop to leave his central diocese and let someone else run it while he is under investigation for covering up cases of sexual abuse that were featured in a second clergy abuse documentary that has rocked Poland's Catholic Church.

The Marianists religious order on June 24 released the names of 46 living and dead religious leaders who they claim sexually abused minors, the latest of several Catholic organizations to complete an investigation and publicly name the accused.

The California Catholic Conference of Bishops is denouncing the toppling of Junipero Serra statues that protesters took down in San Francisco and Los Angeles over the weekend.

A Tennessee newspaper said June 21 it is investigating what its editor called a “horrific” full-page advertisement from a religious group that predicts a terrorist attack in Nashville next month.

Pope Francis welcomed doctors and nurses from the coronavirus-ravaged region of Lombardy to the Vatican on June 20 to thank them for their selfless work and "heroic" sacrifice.

Jean Kennedy Smith, who was the last surviving sibling of President John F. Kennedy and who as a U.S. ambassador played a key role in the peace process in Northern Ireland, has died, relatives said Thursday. She was 92.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a reprieve June 16 to a Texas inmate scheduled to die for fatally stabbing an 85-year-old woman more than two decades ago, continuing a more than four-month delay of executions in the nation’s busiest death penalty state during the coronavirus pandemic.

An Argentine bishop close to Pope Francis has gone back to work at the Holy See's financial administration office while under investigation in his native Argentina and at the Vatican for alleged sexual abuse.

Because of COVID-19, churches no longer reverberate with song; hymnals are neatly stacked and projection screens blank. Even as church leaders plan for reopening, scientists warn that it might be too early to resume singing in groups.

— George Floyd was lovingly remembered June 9 as "Big Floyd" — a father and brother, athlete and mentor, and now a force for change — at a funeral for the black man whose death has sparked a global reckoning over police brutality and racial prejudice.

A federal appeals court on June 8 ordered a lower court to toss out legal challenges to President Donald Trump's 3-year-old ban on travelers from predominantly Muslim countries, finding that a judge misinterpreted a Supreme Court ruling that found the ban has a "legitimate grounding in national security concerns."

A Swiss bishop's appointment of a lay mother of three to a senior administrative post previously held by a priest has raised eyebrows in conservative Catholic circles, at a time when a strengthened role for women in the church is under debate in other European countries.

Two New Orleans universities, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans and a government contractor are defendants in a whistleblower lawsuit alleging fraud involving more than $100 million in Hurricane Katrina aid.

Joe Biden mounted one of his most aggressive attacks against President Donald Trump on June 2, deriding the commander in chief's disregard of core constitutional values and blistering him for being "more interested in power than in principle."

When coronavirus struck inside Europe's largest diocesan seminary, it upended the intense educational routine and spurred soul-searching among the nearly 130 young men studying to become Catholic priests.